Fauna stared daggers at Lamphrey over the empty streets of Triant.

"Should've known you'd show up again," the Hopla tutted.

She lowered her staff, however, seeing that Lamphrey hadn't come to fight. In fact, as she sat on the timbre roof of the house across the street, he Tialax looked almost meditative.

"Are you here to tell us that everything's happening 'according to plan'?"

Lamphrey did not smile. Nor did she laugh.

"No, Fauna," she said. "My part in all this is almost over. The reason I am here, now, is because I cannot help my own curiosity."

Fauna frowned at the lizardwoman's strange words. Though she'd stopped thinking as Lamphrey strictly as an enemy, she also couldn't think of her as a friend. There was too much aloofness to her for that.

And yet, Fauna remembered what she'd told her down in the depths of Haylock's dungeon. She was here for one thing: the future.

"And what's got you curious?" Fauna asked. "I thought you could see all the different paths we could walk."

"Only possibilities," Lamphrey shrugged. "But the power of the Great Prophet is not something I can fathom. I know the path she has set him on. Yet, I cannot know if it is the right path."

"The right path for who? You? Ethan?"

"For Argwyll," Lamphrey answered. "The only thing that truly matters."

Fauna was ready to cry out that Lamphrey needed to be clearer now more than ever when the faint sound of a scream erupted from the Triant forest. The Hopla jerked her head towards the noise, and it came again – louder, more shrill. And this time she could hear that it was…human.

When she looked back up to the roof, Lamphrey was gone.

Now, she was standing right beside her.

"There are things I cannot say," the Tialax said as the screams came again. "But – something is happening in Argwyll. Something is stirring in the hearts of men. Change is coming to the world, and you are its heralds just as much as the Archon is."

The scream came again – pained and twisted. It sounded like someone was being tortured.

"Lamphrey…" Fauna whispered. "What are you…"

Fauna's voice caught in her throat. The Tialax mage looked suddenly possessed. Her eyes were fixated on a point past the town perimeter. A point in the forest.

And when the screams within came for the fifth time, she had already started running.

"Come, if you would see how this world is quickly altering," she shouted back over her shoulder.

Fauna glanced around, hoping that Tara and Klax would forgive her for following this mad lizard into the dark.

But those screams were too shrill to be ignored. And something in the Tialax's words had stirred her. Curiosity took hold of her fluffy breast, and before she could even understand why she was doing it, her little feet were already hopping after Lamphrey.

Ethan descended towards the glowing sight of Sir Ranok, while the latter's sword flew up to meet him.

And to the old knight's surprise, the Archon's three heads each belched out a different Skill to deflect the spinning blade of light:

[Twilight Edge]

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[Thorn Hail]

[Ice Barrage]

Darkness met light, clashing together as the Archon's triadic assault consumed the blade of the Greycloak. Ranok tightened his hand, feeling his legs buckle beneath him, as he tried to will the blade through the Archon's sheer might.

Come on, you old bastard. Come on…

He checked his willpower. He saw it faltering.

WILLPOWER: 2200/3000

2150/3000

Think of the kid, the old warrior told himself. Think of Lucent. Think of the – ah, fuck it.

He let all thoughts of others go. He was no hero. This was no valiant last stand. He was a scumbag through and through – a man who'd once been at the head of the Greys in their finest hour. A man who'd once believed in all that guff about being one of Kaedmon's 'chosen people'.

But he looked up at the Archon in all its might, and terror, and he just couldn't see it. He couldn't see how he, and all the men lying dead around him, had some kind of point. He couldn't fathom that they were suffering and dying for a good reason.

And yet, he also couldn't just lay down and die. Maybe it was the booze. But he liked to think that, if anyone wrote his name in some chronicle of these times, they'd at least remember this moment when he showed the world who he really was.

The meteoric dive of the Archon continued to hurtle past the clouds, and Ethan cloaked himself in [Repulsor Shield] and [Barkskin] so that he really did look like a comet piercing the heavens. He sailed towards Ranok's dying blade, and Ranok saw his chance.

Now!

He closed his fist and made to rip his hands through the air in one swift, viscous motion. It was his trump card – the skill he'd been keeping up his sleeve for exactly this moment:

[Divine Combustion]

You expel the light of Keadmon from your blade, causing an explosion of holy light that deals 500 pts of damage but destroys your weapon in the process.

All he had to do was complete the motion. It would only take a single second, then that horror would be crippled enough that he could finish it off with his bare ha-

SLICE!

The sight of his right hand disappearing in a puff of sapphire filled his vision. He blinked, and only then did the sound of his hand being severed reach his ears.

And his system screen buzzed to tell him exactly how he'd just been bested:

Spectral Snipe (Grade A)

[Flexible Fire] Unlocked!

Your command over the spectral energies inside you is strong enough that you can direct it wherever you will.

Spectral Snipe's line of fire can now be changed to bend round corners, twist, or spiral as suits your purposes.

He attacked me from my blind spot, Ranok realized, looking at the red stump where his hand once was. The power from the sniper bolt had been such that it had immediately cauterized the wound. His hand had practically been deleted from existence.

And all because I was so focused on you…that I didn't see an attack you launched before you'd even started your dive towards me…

The pain was immense, but more painful was the sight of the Archon breaking through his blade completely, its enhanced bulk cutting the sword to ribbons and shattering it into fragments with its Onixia coated claws.

He made to try and [Blink] away but found that his movement was restricted. Spectral, ghostly limbs wrapped in threads of darkness.

Five Shadow Wraiths screamed into his ears while their claws raked his body, throwing themselves onto him to keep him pinned while the Archon made his devastating descent.

Ranok looked up at the raging beast and did the only thing he could do: he smiled.

Kaedmon, he thought. If you're up there – bring me back as a bottle of scotch.

Fauna hurried through the forest of Triant after Lamphrey, focused on the pained screams that were still coming from within the dark depths beyond the trees.

The sound had become more shrill. More pained. In the beginning, they had been screams fueled by anger – perhaps someone fighting against a horde of oppressors. Now, however, they were desperate – the final, animalistic cries of a human who was on death's door.

Whatever Lamphrey wanted to show her, it wouldn't be pleasant. Yet still, she had to see. She had to see what it was that this Tialax woman was trying to tell her.

Eventually, the Tialax stopped, and bent low behind a series of bushes at the very edge of the forest perimeter. She grew quiet, and as Fauna approached, panting, she signaled her to keep quiet with one choppy finger on her dry mouth.

"Come," she said. "It is starting."

Fauna crouched low, eyes fixed on what was happening beyond the bushes. She peered through the leaves, keeping a small Arcane Shield charged just in case this was some kind of nefarious trap. Beside her, she could feel Lamphrey's breathing growing heavier – and it seemed too that she was trembling.

Fauna only understood what this emotional mix meant when she finally saw what was on the other side of the bush – the locus of all the screams.

A troop of human soldiers – clad in the double-eagle insignia of Lucent – were standing around a single tree. Each one of them looked beaten, bruised, and disheveled – their armor waterlogged, their spirits weathered by fear. There must have been at least fifty of them huddled round the small glade in the middle of the forest, all bustling and pushing against each other in a frenzy to get at the thing in the very center of their huddle.

And when Fauna saw what it was that they were so fixated on, a gasp of shock escaped her throat.

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